Online sites that receive funding from and hire foreigners can easily be used to advance foreign interests, Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said on Wednesday (Sept 25).

He highlighted sociopolitical website The Online Citizen (TOC) as an example, noting that it received support from and employs foreigners — including Malaysians — who write “almost exclusively negative articles” on social and political matters in Singapore.

Speaking at an S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) conference on foreign-interference tactics and countermeasures on Wednesday (Sept 25), Mr Shanmugam pointed out that the site was responsible for an article at the heart of a defamation lawsuit brought by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.